TOWNs in Europe Loris Servillo Luxemburg, 12 December 2014 Outline - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

TOWNs in Europe

Loris Servillo

Luxemburg, 12 December 2014

Luxembourgish Small and Medium-Sized Towns in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities Ministère du Développement durable et des Infrastructures Luxemburg-Kirchberg

Outline

• 1. SMSTs in the EU territory
• 2. General vs specific trends?
• 3. Evidences for more appropriated policies - do we need to

go beyond the large-city bias in (EU) urban policy?

Linguistic differences and translating problems

A dichotomy not always present in each national/lingustic context: town – city, ville – cité, paese(?) – citta’, ortschaft – stadt Otherwise urban condition generally addressed as ciudad, mesto, etc.. A semantic ambiguity: small, intermediate, local…

What is a town?

Administrative interpretation Functional interpretation Morphological interpretation

What is a town?

An empirical and territorialist approach (Brenner & Schmid, 2013)

Main territorial trends or observations

Terms Definitions Distinctive characteristics Criteria Morphological definition Built up area (area with urban physical characteristics) of a minimum population size Concentration of buildings (distinction from open spaces) and population (above minimal threshold) Compact build-up area Distance between settlements and buildings Population Density of urbanised area Administrative definition Settlement with urban administrative status Local government with urban administrative duties and responsibilities and territory / boundary containing urban settlements Local government administrative functions Historical attribution functional definition Urban settlement (municipality) with concentration of jobs, services and other urban functions Role of centre for region due to concentration of jobs and other urban functions attracting commuters and visitors Population Jobs Other urban functions Commuting Centrality Larger area with functional relationship with one or more urban cores Gravitational area of jobs, services and other functions located in urban core(s) Access to jobs and services Home-work commuting Home-service commuting

Urban settlement Urban municipality Urban centre / urban core Urban functional region

Complexity and institutional diversity across Europe concerning the relationship between administrative and morphological definitions Not only a technical aspect:

• Data issue

(thus)

• Policy issue

What is a town?

Challenges for an ESPON project

policy recommendations based on evidences concerning spatial dynamics and correlation of factors. Operative questions

• What is a small and medium-sized town?
• What interpretative approach?
• What data are available for comparison?

What have we done in TOWN? ESPON terms of reference (in line with DG Regio – OECD):

Towns: settlements with 5-50,000 inhabitants

Athens (from: Cities in Europe: the new OECD-EC definition, Dijkstra & Poelman, 2011)

Small and medium-sized towns

What have we done in TOWN?

Morphological analysis

• ‘Urban polygons’ identified as separate built-up areas with

population size and density consistently with criteria set by DG Regio / OECD

• Focus on Small and Medium sized towns

Morphological interpretation

Morphological interpretation

Morphological interpretation

Dimension of population in smaller settlements

Classes Delimitation criteria Count

• Av. Pop

Av. Sq.km Av. Density Total pop. in this class as % of ESPON space* High-density Urban Clusters (HDUC)

• Pop. > 50,000
• Pop. Density > 1,500

inh/km2 850 275,476 92.3 2,927.10 234,154,670 46.3% Large SMST Pop > 50,000,

• Pop. Density < 1,500

inh/km2 100 132,331 101.8 1,299.6 13,233,142 2,6% Medium SMST 25,000 < Pop < 50,000,

• Pop. Density > 300

inh/km2 966 35,163 19.7 2,060.59 33,967,357 6.7% Small SMST 5,000 < Pop < 25,000,

• Pop. Density > 300

inh/km2 7348 10,242 7.6 1,470.09 75,254,510 14.9% Very Small Towns (VST)

• Pop. < 5,000
• Pop. Density > 300

inh./km2 69,043 1,193 1.7 699.3 82,376,586 16.3% * including EU 27+ Iceland, Norway, Lichtenstein, Switzerland

NUTS3 with prevailing settlements

Settlement polygons

EU perspective

Largest share of pop. lives in HDUC Largest share of pop. lives in SMST Largest share of pop. lives in VST Largest share of pop. lives in other settlements

NUTS3 with prevailing settlements

Settlement polygons

EU perspective

Regional typology based on population change rates 2001- 2011 as a difference from the EU-27 average

Regional typology based on population change rates 2001- 2011 as a difference from the national average

Regional typology based on p.c. GDP change rates 2001-2011 as a difference from the EU-27 average

Regional typology based on p.c. GDP change rates 2001-2011 as a difference from the national average

• Do SMSTs across Europe present ‘common trends’?

Importance of macro spatial trends

• Regions with smaller settlements may have less inertial

capacity to bounce them back Combination of macro/meso dynamics and local trajectories

• Socio-spatial configurations with a specific regional

dependency (e.g. surrounding larger urban regions)

• High variety of socio-economic performances (much higher

than larger urban areas)

• EU/National policies matter?

General reflections – trends in Europe

Functional identification of urban systems and their cores

Agglomerated Networked Isolated Criteria:

• Travel-to-work

patterns

• Location of

services

Towns vs large cities?

Catalonia Slovenia Czech Republic Flanders

Towns vs large cities?

0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9 1 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,4 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 networked large cities agglomerated autonomous emp pop

Net migration by country Migration- enhanced aging? Growing Labour exporters Shrinking

Regional clusters

A B C D E F G H

Migration- enhanced aging? Growing Labour exporters Shrinking

Do SMSTs across Europe face ‘common problems’?

• Social and economic problems for SMSTs are only

‘common’ in an abstract sense

• In practice the ‘problems’ of towns are mainly framed by:
• their national/regional context
• spatial type (coastal, mountain, post-industrial, etc.)

(clusters of ‘problem-sets’)

Clusters of problem sets

29

30

Residential economy:

• Centre of the Westhoek (commercial,

services of general interest)

• Tourism and recreation – war peace

tourism and rural tourism Productive economy (> Flemish avg):

• Agriculture + processing industries
• some multinational companies

(Picanol, McBright) Knowledge economy

• Flanders Language Valley (Lernaut &

Hauspie) went bankrupt in 2001 -> search for new functions

2001 2010 Residential Economy 3254 11973 Productive Economy 5096 4391 Knowledge Economy 7568 2180 5000 10000 15000 20000 N of jobs

Ieper: Number of jobs by economic profile

Socioeconomic profiling of SMSTs: Ieper (B)

Residential economy:

• Central function within the

arrondissement: schools, commercial centre Productive economy:

• Strongly shrinked

Knowledge Economy:

• Shrinked, but ongoing strategies

to capitalize on proximity to Leuven

2001 2010 Residential Economy 2584 5717 Productive Economy 3545 1722 Knowledge Economy 2644 1752 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 N of jobs

Aarschot: Number of jobs by economic profile

Socioeconomic profiling of SMSTs: Aarschot (B)

Residential economy:

• Centrum function within the

arrondissement: schools, juridical functions, commercial centre Productive economy:

• Strongly shrinked

Knowledge Economy:

• very important downfall between

2001 and 2011

2001 2010 Residential Economy 2977 9758 Productive Economy 4390 3146 Knowledge Economy 6184 2236 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 N of jobs

Dendermonde: Number of jobs by economic profile

Socioeconomic profiling of SMSTs: Dendermonde (B)

Some evidence:

• Settlements agglomerated in larger metropolitan areas are

destabilised

• on the one hand by suburbanisation, and
• on the other hand by a re-concentration of jobs and services in

cities

• Successful cases are those one strategically working on

diversification and innovation

• Evidence suggest the presence of integrated territorial systems,

in which urban areas are tightly integrated and complementing each others

Summing up

On average, SMSTs (in database) are different from large cities on a range of socio-economic issues

• greater proportion of industrial employment;
• A significantly smaller proportion of jobs (on average) in private

marketed services and in public services in comparison to HDUCs;

• more self-employment, less diverse in sectorial mix

‘All’ Small towns (N=1339) Small towns in Slovenia Small towns in NW Italy

Socio-economic and administrative issues

Warning message?

Preliminary results

Considerations

• Importance of supporting diversification of economic profiles
• Taking in consideration higher number of self-employment and

specific socially-bound dynamics (> tailored policies and territorial tacit knowledge) But:

• is the local administrative level the right one?
• Does it have the right capacities?
• Is the appropriate territory?

N (SMST polygons in database) Mean number of intersections between SMST polygons and: local authority units (LAU) NUTS3 regions (2006) Belgium (BE) 184 1.23 1.05 Czech Republic (CZ) 222 1.73 1.01 Spain (ES) 65 1.78 1.00 France (FR) 881 2.89 1.06 Italy (IT) 252 2.41 1.11 Poland (PL) 42 1.33 1.02 Sweden (SE) 41 1.00 1.00 Slovenia (SI) 43 1.26 1.00 England & Wales (UK) 574 1.19 1.12 Total 2304 2.05 1.07

! Policy message

Administrative mismatch (> coordination and micro-regionalism)

• Understanding town needs and opportunities
• Giving SMSTs a voice in regional debates
• Tailored measures (place-based approach?)
• Tacit knowledge and socially-bound dynamics
• Supporting alternative visions of the local economy
• Supporting the definition of micro-regionalism processes
• Building synergies through cooperation
• Territorial governance:
• Multilevel and horizontal cooperation
• Policies tailoring functional territory
• Working on town administrative capacity
• Increasing local leadership
• Knowledge/ access to different funding opportunities
• 3. Policy reflections

CLLD? Enough?

THANK YOU Loris.Servillo@asro.kuleuven.be

Accept the challenge of “thinking big about thinking small”! (Bell and Jayne, 2009)